USA Politics (redux)

[fbjim]

The Daniel Shaver shooting was covered extensively, both domestically and internationally. Both the shooting itself and the officer's inevitable acquittal.

[DizzyD]

The Daniel Shaver shooting was covered extensively, both domestically and internationally. Both the shooting itself and the officer's inevitable acquittal.

I never heard about it. I did hear extensively about George Floyd. Are trigger-happy authoritarian cops a problem? Yes. But it isn't necessarily a racial issue. In my younger days I had a run-in with an arrogant local officer in which I could've been killed if I had made even a teeny tiny wrong move. I'm white.

[Todd]

[fbjim]

To put it another way, it would be one thing if "all lives matter" were a call for inter-racial solidarity to rein in all police violence. In practice it was almost never used this way except either purely rhetorically, or as a platitude.

It is true that despite base rates, unjustified killings can affect anyone. The question does become then- why it is that minority groups are the ones who care enough to actually try to do something about it.

[DizzyD]

To put it another way, it would be one thing if "all lives matter" were a call for inter-racial solidarity to rein in all police violence. ...

Maybe that's the tack that BLM and the media should've taken, in the manner of civil rights activists in the 50s and 60s. The media thrive on conflict. They stoke it.

... The question does become then- why it is that minority groups are the ones who care enough to actually try to do something about it.

The answer could partly be that unjustified killings of minorities are the ones that the media prefer to focus on.

[fbjim]

The reason minority groups tend to have higher levels of inter-group solidarity is not "the media".

I think it would be worthwhile for people to protest all unjustified police killings - but a) asking minority activists to do the work and be activists for people outside their group, rather than having them do that work themselves is rather bizarre - b) intra-group solidarity is not a creation of "the media" but of historical facts of shared culture and interest (see: solidarity among groups of Asian-American immigrants despite the media virtually never caring about them)  and c) in practice, after its origination as an anodyne liberal sentiment, "All lives matter" became used by the same groups defending the use of deadly force by police officers.

[DizzyD]

The reason minority groups tend to have higher levels of inter-group solidarity is not "the media".

So then to you it's not really a question. Yes, it's the media in large part. It's in their interest to divide, not unite.

I think it would be worthwhile for people to protest all unjustified police killings - but a) asking minority activists to do the work and be activists for people outside their group, rather than having them do that work themselves is rather bizarre - b) intra-group solidarity is not a creation of "the media" but of historical facts of shared culture and interest (see: solidarity among groups of Asian-American immigrants despite the media virtually never caring about them)  and c) in practice, after its origination as an anodyne liberal sentiment, "All lives matter" became used by the same groups defending the use of deadly force by police officers.

Waaaaaaait a second...you say it's bizarre to ask minority activists to protest on behalf of people outside their group but then talk about "inter-group solidarity". Logic logic logic. (edit) Sorry, I notice now that you said "intra-group". In that case, with that kind of balkanization, why should ANYone care about what goes on outside their group?

[drogulus]

Waaaaaaait a second...you say it's bizarre to ask minority activists to protest on behalf of people outside their group but then talk about "inter-group solidarity". Logic logic logic.

     A group that perceives they are being targeted for their distinctive characteristics will protest. Quite understandably inter-group solidarity comes after.

     From the get go I thought BLM meant "too", and I never considered it meant "more" or "only", or that more people in other groups should be shot more to even things up.

[DavidW]

What I really get out of this graph is that anyone trying to make any type of conclusion one way or the other based on their "research" is talking out of their butts since we have that gigantic "unknown" bar that could skew things either way.

[Karl Henning]

From the get go I thought BLM meant "too", and I never considered it meant "more" or "only", or that more people in other groups should be shot more to even things up.

Indeed, that's just a bugbear for the white grievance cult.

[DizzyD]

     A group that perceives they are being targeted for their distinctive characteristics will protest. Quite understandably inter-group solidarity comes after.

So the issue isn't really overreach by the police. It's a perception.

From the get go I thought BLM meant "too", and I never considered it meant "more" or "only", or that more people in other groups should be shot more to even things up.

I'm more interested in facts of individual cases, for example the Michael Brown case. "Hands up, don't shoot" wasn't factual, yet I remember hearing that over and over. Now it's deeply problematic to me that Michael Brown was shot six times. That to me is unnecessary force, and honestly I think some kind of charges and disciplinary action should've been brought against Darren Wilson. It's not always necessary to shoot to kill. However if you protest the killing of Brown or the shooting of Jacob Blake but yet think unarmed Ashli Babbitt had it coming, you have no consistent ethical ground on which to stand. Instead you have a political agenda.

[Todd]

What I really get out of this graph is that anyone trying to make any type of conclusion one way or the other based on their "research" is talking out of their butts since we have that gigantic "unknown" bar that could skew things either way.

Criminology is a complex subject.  It involves other fields of social research and relates to other fields of inquiry.  It relies on data that takes months or years to be finalized based on adjusted information provided from decentralized sources using non-standardized methodologies.  There are some well-known trends and patterns - eg, non-Hispanic whites always make up the largest absolute number of any category of activity, non-whites are always disproportionately affected on a population basis, and socio-economic factors contribute substantially to the latter condition.  Measured, fact-based exchanges informed by recent research can be found online.  It is improbable that such exchanges will occur on a thread devoted to politics.

[Karl Henning]

A Pro-Choicer and a Pro-Lifer Do Lunch

[Fëanor]

I'm more interested in facts of individual cases, for example the Michael Brown case. "Hands up, don't shoot" wasn't factual, yet I remember hearing that over and over. Now it's deeply problematic to me that Michael Brown was shot six times. That to me is unnecessary force, and honestly I think some kind of charges and disciplinary action should've been brought against Darren Wilson. It's not always necessary to shoot to kill. However if you protest the killing of Brown or the shooting of Jacob Blake but yet think unarmed Ashli Babbitt had it coming, you have no consistent ethical ground on which to stand. Instead you have a political agenda.

Don't recall about Michael Brown case.  Then there's Jayland Walker shot 60 times on June 27 in Akron: WTF?  60 times?

There was the case a few years ago in Toronto when a cop confronted a south Asian man with a knife on a city bus.  As I recall, he shot the guy 7 times and he died.  The cop was eventually convicted of attempted murder.  The guy was dead, why not murder?? ...

Well because the guy had gone down after 2 shots at least one fatal;  the cop then shot him 5 more times on the ground.  The first 2 shots were deem justified;  the subsequent 5 were not.

[DizzyD]

Don't recall about Michael Brown case.  Then there's Jayland Walker shot 60 times on June 27 in Akron: WTF?  60 times?

There was the case a few years ago in Toronto when a cop confronted a south Asian man with a knife on a city bus.  As I recall, he shot the guy 7 times and he died.  The cop was eventually convicted of attempted murder.  The guy was dead, why not murder?? ...

Well because the guy had gone down after 2 shots;  the cop then shot him 5 more times on the ground.  The first 2 shots were deem justified;  the subsequent 5 were not.

The question though is about whether such deadly force is appropriate. The south Asian man had a knife. Was he shot that many times because of his ethnicity or is it trigger-happiness on the part of the cops? Here's another interesting story from several years ago that I never heard about:

https://www.laweekly.com/an-unarmed-white-man-is-shot-by-a-cop-and-black-activists-rally/

[fbjim]

In the Shaver case the cop was acquitted despite the man being on the ground face down when he was shot. His explanation of the (drunken) man crawling towards him, which he had ordered him to do was "trying to gain a position of advantage in order to gain a better firing position on us"*. He was eventually re-instated by the police department.


*the use of militaristic euphemism-speak by police is a topic by itself, and the media's repetition of it has not been without its criticism.

[71 dB]

What I really get out of this graph is that anyone trying to make any type of conclusion one way or the other based on their "research" is talking out of their butts since we have that gigantic "unknown" bar that could skew things either way.

A lot of the 2021 and 2022 cases are probably "unknown", because they are not added properly into the statistics yet. It is also possible that the George Floyd incidence and the whole BLM thing following it has changed how the police keeps statistics.

[drogulus]

So the issue isn't really overreach by the police. It's a perception.

     It's a well founded perception that police shoot black people at a higher rate, roughly twice their proportion in the population. The chart shows that, up until the last 2 years when the "unknown" category came to the rescue. Do unknown lives matter? I would say yes, but no one will protest for them, which might be the point.

A lot of the 2021 and 2022 cases are probably "unknown", because they are not added properly into the statistics yet. It is also possible that the George Floyd incidence and the whole BLM thing following it has changed how the police keeps statistics.

     Yeah, maybe.

[DizzyD]

     It's a well founded perception that police shoot black people at a higher rate, roughly twice their proportion in the population.

For lots of reasons, and not because black people are any more inherently criminal than any other group, black people are also disproportionately involved in crime. It is not racist to point that out. A century ago it probably would've been Irish and Italians in the metropolitan areas.

There is evidence in the official police-recorded figures that black Americans are more likely to commit certain types of crime than people of other races.

While it would be naïve to suggest that there is no racism in the US criminal justice system, victim reports don't support the idea that this is because of mass discrimination.

Higher poverty rates among various urban black communities might explain the difference in crime rates, although the evidence is mixed.

There are few simple answers and links between crime and race are likely to remain the subject of bitter argument.

https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-black-americans-commit-crime

The chart shows that, up until the last 2 years when the "unknown" category came to the rescue. Do unknown lives matter? I would say yes, but no one will protest for them, which might be the point.

I think it's less about justice for many than it is about the usual tribalism.

[drogulus]

For lots of reasons, and not because black people are any more inherently criminal than any other group, black people are also disproportionately involved in crime. It is not racist to point that out. A century ago it probably would've been Irish and Italians in the metropolitan areas.

     I think it has to do with encounters with the police in inherently stressful situations, not crime in general. I would have to look deeper at the kind of situations where police are likely to shoot, justified or not. Based only on media reports alone, I surmise that "shot while holding a sandwich" is rarer for whites. I don't think racism explains all of it, but the history of policing suggest that officers have an ingrained fear of black suspects that is prevalent among officers of all races. This has to do with the neighborhoods where the possibility of violent confrontations is rationally deemed to be higher than average.

     The question might be better resolved by asking why so few white suspects invoke a fear response in police officers. If you only normalize for neighborhood crime rates I still think there's a disparity in, say, "shot while running away". But I do think we need a finer grained breakdown of the circumstances of cases.